Ultimate Spider-Man Wiki:Manual of Style
The Manual of Style (often abbreviated MoS or MOS) is a style guide for all articles on the Ultimate Spider-Man Wiki. Please do not reorganization and do cleanup of wikitext on the wiki unless you are fixing things to follow this style guideline. The MoS is used to assist editors to keep the language, layout, and general format of all articles precise and consistent. Please respect the guide while editing. General Writing Style *As Ultimate Spider-Man is an American television show, all articles should be written in U.S English to reflect its origins. There is one exception: **The wiki will use the U.K.'s rules for punctuation, otherwise known as logical punctuation, in which all punctuation marks are place inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and outside if they are not. *Avoid the use of any contractions, such as "can't", "could've", "didn't", and et cetera. Contractions are informal; therefore, they do not belong in encyclopedic writing styles. *Articles should be written in an in-universe style and must be sourced. Use official and reliable sources. *Use words that are appropriate in articles. Avoid the use of obscenities and slang terms/euphemisms. *Articles should be written in third-person present tense, not past or future tense. Keep the tenses of articles/sections consistent. There are two exceptions: **Use past tense to describe events prior to the start of the series. **Past tense should only be used for characters' articles that are deceased (e.g. Ben Parker). *Don't use nicknames when referring to a character in an article (e.g. referring to Spider-Man as "Spidey" or Doctor Octopus as "Doc Ock", or "Ock"). Either use a character's real name or code name when editing. It is preferable to use a character's real name when describing events when they are not posing as their alter egos. *Do not add content unrelated to the article in order to keep the articles' content concise. Make sure that everything on a page is directly related to the subject of the article. *Events that occur in the comics are not canon to the series. Therefore, any events that occur in the comics should not be mentioned in the main body of an article. *Before adding images to articles, please read image policy first. When inserting images into articles, follow these guidelines: **Images should never be placed in the middle of paragraphs. Always place images on the top of paragraphs to avoid ruining the format. **Images must follow a left-right-left pattern, with the first image positioned to the left, the second image positioned to the right, and then the next one to the left, and so forth. Don't position images too close together. **Avoid cluttering an article with too many images, especially smaller articles. **For smaller articles, use either a gallery or a slideshow (positioned to the right) to post images. **For the Abilities and Powers and Equipment sections, images must be placed in a slideshow, positioned to the right, to avoid disrupting the format. **A gallery can be created at the bottom of an article to post images for important illustration purposes. *Quotes are allowed in only characters' articles and require a reference. Quotes should be placed for one sub-section only, and be relevant to the events described in that sub-section. Quotes must reflect the character's personality and their relationships with other characters. To add a quote to an article, please use the Quote template. Quotes are optional, so not every sub-section is required to have one, especially if there aren't any quotes that can properly illustrate the character's personality, abilities/powers, and et cetera. *Speculation/fan theories are prohibited. This includes posting speculation/fan theories on articles' discussion pages. Any speculation or theories found in the articles will be deleted. *Vandalism is prohibited and will be deleted if found. Do not insert false information, spam/advertising, or nonsense/gibberish into the pages or remove content from them. Do not add offensive articles or images with abusive/sexual content, vulgar language, or discriminating remarks on the wiki. *Videos are prohibited. Do not upload them on the wiki. Links to videos should only used as references. *For legal reasons, do not insert links to episodes from illegal sources anywhere on the wiki. *When editing pages, fill in the "Summary" box above the Save/Preview buttons before saving to describe why the edit is being made if the reason isn't obvious. Moreover, when doing a minor edit, check the "Minor Edit" box to signify that only superficial changes being made, such as fixing spelling/grammar mistakes, formatting, adding/removing spaces, and/or rearranging text without changing the content. When filling in the "Summary" box, use proper spelling and grammar. Layout Characters All characters within the series may have their own page as long as they have a substantial/significant involvement in the storyline, meaning that characters who have made only made cameo appearances or have simply been referenced to do not need their own articles. Additionally, characters who are often seen in pairs (e.g. Cloak and Dagger) do not need his or her own individual article. Characters' articles are to be named after their code name (unless the characters have no alter egos, of course), as their code names are what they referred to throughout the series. Several characters in the series have taken different code names due to their respective circumstances (e.g. Norman Osborn, who is known as the Green Goblin and Iron Patriot repeatedly throughout the series). By default, if a character has been known by different code names, their article's name should be their real name. Section Order *'(Main)' - '' The general introduction of a character's page. This is the one without a section name. A character's introduction should be kept simple and short as possible, and should not l anyonger than two paragraphs.'' *'History' - Historical and background information on the character. *'Design' - Physical description of the character. *'Personality' - Information on the character's personality. *'Relationships' - Description of a relationship between two characters or more. Not required, and only should be created if applicable. Do not create sub-sections for this section if the relationship that is being described has no substance. Sections in which characters are listed that have no significance to the article's subject will be removed. *'Abilities and Powers' - Information on a character's abilities and powers, or just one or the other depending on the character. To clarify, '''Abilities' and Powers are not interchangeable. Abilities refers to a character's skill set which he or she have obtained through practice and training, such as computer hacking, espionage, intelligence, martial arts, marksmanship, multilingualism, and et cetera. Powers refers to characters that have gained superhuman capabilities beyond the scope of an average human, such as flight, teleportation, super speed, super strength, and et cetera, via scientific or magical means.'' *'Equipment' - A list of gadgets and other apparatuses used by a character in the series. *'Appearances' - A list of episodes that a character has appeared and/or been mentioned in. There are three sub-types of appearances. **'Cameo' - Typically, a cameo refers to a character who has no lines and plays no part in a storyline. They are background characters. This includes flashbacks, dreams, and characters are seen via a picture, hologram, on a TV, or Spider-Man's imagination. For clarification, if a character has a speaking role in a flashback, dream, or etc., it counts as a regular appearance. **'No lines' - Characters who play a part in a storyline, but are not given speaking lines whatsoever. Please be aware that characters who do not have speaking lines in an episode could still be listed in the credits for the voice cast, as the characters' respective voice actors/actresses would still be credited for providing a characters' grunts and other sound effects. **'Mentioned' - A character that does not appear in an episode or a chapter, but is merely mentioned by someone. *'Trivia' - Interesting, noteworthy tidbits of information on a character, including allusions and other references that are clearly and strongly linked back to them. Junk trivia or any information not relevant to the character or the series will be removed. Episodes/Chapters Section Order *'(Main)' - The general introduction of an episode/chapter, detailing its title and number. For episodes' titles, they must be written as seen in the opening credits. *'Synopsis' - A description of the events that takes place within an episode/chapter, highlighting the important parts as much as possible. '''Note:' The synopsis is not to be written as a transcript or word-for-word.'' *'Voice Cast' - A chart of the voice actors and actresses as shown in the credits of the episode. For each issue, a chart is made for characters that have physically appeared and/or were mentioned. *'Trivia' - Any relevant allusions and references, and/or errors shown in an episode/chapter (if applicable). '''Note:' A character's number of appearances is not considered trivia worthy. Characters who have made only cameo appearances or were briefly mentioned, and do not have have their own articles are the sole exception.'' Category:Policy